tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post3678475377359790639..comments2018-05-18T12:13:56.400-04:00Comments on Passport to Dreams Old &amp; New: Fire in the Night: The Pre-Eminent Attraction-as-ArtFoxxFurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00443092111956989561noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-26020242941790342062013-06-11T15:19:49.014-04:002013-06-11T15:19:49.014-04:00I love your blog and was so surprised to see Dunge...I love your blog and was so surprised to see Dungeon Rock mentioned, which is literally walking distance from my house. Keep it up with the awesome, insightful journalism/archivism.Mike Deveauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00968028085954061518noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-20905702933652369372011-08-29T20:27:07.702-04:002011-08-29T20:27:07.702-04:00I fully agree that the Disneyland version of PotC ...I fully agree that the Disneyland version of PotC is far superior to the Disney World version. Still, I can&#39;t accept your assertion that &quot;trying to do Pirates without the Bayou...sequence is like try[ing] to make Hamlet come off without the Ghost scenes.&quot; You make a good argument earlier in your essay for the purpose of the bayou prologue, but I can&#39;t get over the fact that the juxtaposition of what is clearly a NINETEENTH-century LOUISIANA bayou with an EIGHTEENTH-century CARIBBEAN town makes absolutely no logical sense. It&#39;s as preposterous as the turn-of-the-century Scott Joplin ragtime soundtrack played throughout the 1930s-set movie &quot;The Sting.&quot; Sure, it may SEEM to &quot;work&quot; and be be perfectly &quot;logical&quot; to us, but it&#39;s just because we&#39;ve grown up with it this way and have never truly thought long and hard about it. Disney World&#39;s PotC may be a pale shadow of the original, but at least its placement in Caribbean Plaza makes sense. True, the bayou prologue to Disneyland&#39;s PotC is atmospheric Disney imagineering at its best, but it&#39;s misplaced and doesn&#39;t make a lick of sense.Brenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03089859218914229775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-32570625799185717782011-08-29T11:43:11.859-04:002011-08-29T11:43:11.859-04:00Somehow, on my first reading of this, I missed or ...Somehow, on my first reading of this, I missed or skimmed the spoiler warning. I grew up in Florida and still haven&#39;t been to Disneyland, so oops. Honestly, if I&#39;d caught it, I would have read on; I can&#39;t resist these essays at all.<br /><br />Thank you so much for this blog. I am an artist (working in total obscurity in Ohio) and Disney informs so much of what I do. Your rigor and insight has me re-approaching Disney as source material, always turning the imagery over in my hands and trying not to take any moment of detail for granted. Your work here is inspiring, hilarious, and ultimately reassuring.loltofuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09677566647883245881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-534308635827667762011-08-26T12:27:58.430-04:002011-08-26T12:27:58.430-04:00We can keep going! :D comment, comment, comment!
...We can keep going! :D comment, comment, comment!<br /><br />I re-re-read your Florida pirates article, and.. <br /><br />Awesome post, and I realized that by the time i got to the load area in Florida, seeing that lonely ship out in the harbor, I have already totally bought in because of the queue and exterior design.<br /><br />It may sound like sacrilege, but I wonder if a reworking of the caverns section to follow the theme of the queue..ie, more scenes about the impending attack.. would better serve the Florida version. As you have pointed out so well, the DL and WDW Pirates really are totally different experiences.<br /><br />I was thinking about &quot;A Pirates Life for Me&quot;. Once you know the song, it can dim the seriousness of the cavern section if you let it. The song itself is in opposition to the morality play, given the next to last line. Obviously this is a non-factor if you&#39;ve never actually been on the ride, so from a design perspective it&#39;s really not a weakness, but...<br /><br />Post by post you are laying out the bones and flesh of how to appreciate WDW in a tremendously satisfying and stimulating way. Bringing it to life the way you do is a special talent.weepstahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13599728117501146736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-80310307575782346992011-08-26T02:20:07.955-04:002011-08-26T02:20:07.955-04:00So many comments! :)
HBG2, I&#39;m very excited t...So many comments! :)<br /><br />HBG2, I&#39;m very excited to find out about those little plaques/descriptions for the historical pirates. My first few trips through the Disneyland Pirates left me fairly confused about that room because I kept trying to shoehorn into into a thematic framework that jives with the Florida version instead of seeing it as something that stands, in a way, outside the attraction. It&#39;s really one of my favorite introductions to an attraction ever. I think Melissa is correct in seeing this as a holdover of the &quot;Pirate Museum&quot; concept and a very interesting one, at that. The fact that there were once signs and other pictures making this more explicit is just wonderful news to me.<br /><br />I think the case for the function of the mystery caverns as a moral framework that puts the bulk of the action in its place is pretty indisputable. Pirates of the Caribbean is perhaps best understood as a morality play, much like Pinocchio (the movie) and Mr. Toad (the ride). The atmosphere of doom is established immediately and when you remove that you cut out the heart of the play, in a way. I have a sneaking suspicion, although I haven&#39;t ever been on the ride, that much like the other attractions heavily adapted for the Paris park, that the DLP version misses the mark and makes vulgar and obvious what plays very gracefully in California. The great accomplishment of the original Pirates is that it makes this essay redundant; you understand all these things in some unspoken way. That&#39;s true attraction mastery at work.<br /><br />Reese, I&#39;ve often thought of talking about the movie additions in some detail but have always resisted because the case is pretty one sided. They work well in Florida, which is a much simpler and very incomplete attraction which they help round out and add structure to, but in Disneyland they just misfire or hardly impress. The very best thing that can be said about that stuff in California is that the addition of the movie figures meant that a lot of ill-advised stuff from the 90s got stripped out, such as amateurish lighting in the caverns and some poorly used leftover figures from World of Motion. This stuff really detracted from the ride, whereas the movie stuff only slightly detracts, and in certain regards returned original 60s era WED staging, lighting schemes, and colors. I think it&#39;s sort of a wash out there.<br /><br />Thanks everyone for commenting! :)FoxxFurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00443092111956989561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-4914606921374075952011-08-26T01:54:34.526-04:002011-08-26T01:54:34.526-04:00I meant to comment on this article in my last post...I meant to comment on this article in my last post. Again, brilliant work. Possibly your best so far. As a writer, I feel I&#39;ll never match your style. It&#39;s very intelligent, well thought out, and unique. <br /><br />I would enjoy seeing you defend the recent movie characters. I feel they generally fit the themes and ideas you stressed in this article. However, do the Imagineers expect us to believe the skeletons are alive now, or what? I would also like your input about Paris&#39;s version which ENDS with the caverns. It starts in a burning fort, putting us immediately in the action.<br /><br />I would like to point out weepstah&#39;s point: &quot;I choose not to choose.&quot; I think that calling POTC the greatest attraction, while well-justified, is quite a diss to the Mansion. The Mansion relies of what we DONT see: parlor tricks and shadows as apposed to actual figures (skeletons, etc). But, that&#39;s just my take on it.<br /><br />I&#39;d also like to add that this piece made me even more upset that the ride was down for refurb on my one and only trip to Cali. I might be riding the inferior Florida version my whole life...<br /><br />Anyway, I&#39;m rambling. Great job as always.Reesie Cuphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10380163094044980916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-35699154579004405112011-08-25T19:38:25.895-04:002011-08-25T19:38:25.895-04:00Just wondering if you saw the new virtual ride-thr...Just wondering if you saw the new virtual ride-through of the Western River Expedition. I&#39;m assuming you were at D23 where a model was on display, but you were the first I thought of when the announcement was made.Reesie Cuphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10380163094044980916noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-88065179837429758482011-08-25T09:49:32.556-04:002011-08-25T09:49:32.556-04:00I just happened upon this blog last week and have ...I just happened upon this blog last week and have only gotten through several entries so far but each is more amazing than the last. I am a HUGE Disney World enthusiast and reading about Disneyland&#39;s Pirates brought back wonderful memories about being there back in 2005. There are several things WDW is seriously lacking and the Pirates ride is certainly one of them. Your attention to detail is ridiculous (and I mean that in a good way). I can&#39;t wait to read more!Katertothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01149737476227068083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-63539551367425550132011-08-23T16:54:07.536-04:002011-08-23T16:54:07.536-04:00An epic, excellent post. Once again, your analysis...An epic, excellent post. Once again, your analysis is intelligent, insightful and well-presented. Being an East Coaster, I&#39;ve only been able to ride the original POTC once, and even then I was too busy taking it all in to notice the details. Luckily, I&#39;ll be in Disneyland again in November. Having read this piece will make the experience even more rewarding. For that, this Disney geek thanks you.Todd Ritterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08407411694195515608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-1022836825501105202011-08-23T09:22:10.605-04:002011-08-23T09:22:10.605-04:00I agree with Cory&#39;s remarks about the &quot;wa...I agree with Cory&#39;s remarks about the &quot;wages of sin&quot; function, allowing you to enjoy what follows guilt-free. In the 50&#39;s (not terribly long before POTC, after all), horror comics got around criticism from parental groups and avoided censorship by cynically throwing in a panel or two at the end wherein the authorities nab the sickos you&#39;ve been looking at and a &quot;crime does not pay&quot; note is sounded. Everyone knew this was only there so you could wallow in the gore and perversity that preceded it. It&#39;s to the credit of the POTC Imagineers that their ticket to ride does not seem in the least cynical but an organic part of the show. Feels like it belongs.HBG2https://www.blogger.com/profile/05073387557562504315noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-54736999916181846702011-08-23T01:24:01.410-04:002011-08-23T01:24:01.410-04:00That was probably the single finest piece of writi...That was probably the single finest piece of writing I&#39;ve ever read on the subject of themed design, and on a Disney attraction specifically. There has got to be some kind of academic journal out there that we can get you published in (and I&#39;ll do my unifying essay on Tokyo&#39;s Mysterious Island so that, by piggybacking, I can get some of that pixie dust shaken on me ^_^). <br /><br />The first act has always been my favorite part of the attraction, followed by the overture. Besides appealing exactly to my love of ghosts and ghouls and Halloweenie things and Gothic mysteries, it struck me as essential justification for the ride&#39;s existence. It seems to me that the beautiful artistry of PotC&#39;s circular narrative must have had its origins in the fact that pirates were fairly dispicable characters unworthy of emulation. Yet they have always provided a swashbuckling thrill for book readers and film watchers. This &quot;wages of sin&quot; framing sequence permits PotC to be a guilty pleasure: we can rollic with the pirates in the middle while relieving our consciences with a moral lesson well learned at beginning and end.<br /><br />That makes the movie-inspired vandalism all the more shameful. Besides the fact that it nonsensically doesn&#39;t even adhere to its own source material (Why is everyone calling him &quot;captain&quot;?) and introduces characters and technologies without parallel in the rest of the ride (Who is the squid guy?), it makes the whole thing a thematic mess. Why are the caverns there anymore? What lesson do we learn from them? What narrative purpose do they serve? None, because Jack Sparrow makes off with the treasure at the end. Those other pirates were just unlucky, I guess. I&#39;m surprised that they didn&#39;t make the skeletons fully animatronic, actually. The moral framework is just purile ghastliness, devoid not only of the original attraction&#39;s themes but even some of the messages of the first movie (which were themselves repudiated in PotC 2 and 3, where apparently pirates were good and the EITC was bad because they... well... I don&#39;t know. They were stuffy and British, I guess). <br /><br />I&#39;m very glad I was able to experience the original PotC in Disneyland USA in 2005 before they vandalized it. I saw the vandalism in Tokyo Disneyland in 2009, and it disappointed me (to say the least). Unfortunately I never quite got the chance to see Paris&#39; version while I was there. Next time!Cory Grosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12141983255020503557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-38794401468385648332011-08-22T18:39:22.770-04:002011-08-22T18:39:22.770-04:00FoxxFur,
Thanks for the links, I see you&#39;ve w...FoxxFur,<br /><br />Thanks for the links, I see you&#39;ve walked well down that pathway already. I&#39;m still trying to process all this information.<br /><br />Excellent art rewards time and time again, doesn&#39;t it? I&#39;ve read Patrick O&#39;Brian&#39;s novels through maybe 6 or 7 times now, and looking forward to the next go round. It&#39;s been ages since I&#39;ve been to the MoMA, and yet I know next time I&#39;m there I&#39;ll be pulled into <i>One: Number 31, 1950</i> and <i>House by the Railroad</i> . I&#39;m thinking of something I read on another blog about the Golden Gate Bridge - that it is elegant - that it meets its function perfectly, needs no additions and will not work with subtractions.<br /><br />Is the best we can hope for to become impassive? I have doubts, impassivity seems to me to be a destructive constraint, especially in a place that requires life to bring it to life. Even if whimsical Cap&#39;n Jacks popping up here and there makes me want to become impassive sometimes.weepstahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13599728117501146736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-15082160890127418082011-08-22T17:36:49.591-04:002011-08-22T17:36:49.591-04:00A great read, as usual!
I&#39;ve got two comments....A great read, as usual!<br />I&#39;ve got two comments.<br />First, there is a clear analog to the long delay before you actually see a pirate, a delay filled with evidence of their presence. The same formula is used at the HM, where you don&#39;t actually see a ghost until after the Séance.<br />Second, a bit of trivia that should fit in somewhere in the analysis. Originally, at DL, the wall on the left as you first enter, all the way up to Lafitte&#39;s Landing, had placards on it with a lot of Davis&#39;s snapshot biographies of real pirates written thereon, along with artwork that was (IIRC) not Davis&#39;s but taken from 18th-19th c. book illustrations. The placards themselves were a creamy, parchment color, no doubt to signify age. They were obviously something for people to read while standing in line, to make it less boring. They didn&#39;t last, probably because they must have been hard to fix when vandalized. I&#39;ve never seen them in any photos, nor heard from anyone else who remembers them, so it&#39;s just my memory, but it&#39;s crystal clear on this.HBG2https://www.blogger.com/profile/05073387557562504315noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-3320993064838771782011-08-22T12:00:26.450-04:002011-08-22T12:00:26.450-04:00Another through-provoking piece.
Maybe that is ho...Another through-provoking piece.<br /><br />Maybe that is how D23 could make some money. They could hire you to lead people through the attractions firsthand!George Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11023449275486420957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-85307836136778764762011-08-22T11:44:21.677-04:002011-08-22T11:44:21.677-04:00Seriously, where are you teaching and when is the ...Seriously, where are you teaching and when is the next semester starting?<br /><br />Loved, loved, loved this. Thank youAdamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00083965600296940807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-75288090764784407022011-08-22T10:10:53.891-04:002011-08-22T10:10:53.891-04:00I always interpreted the foyer as being the &quot;...I always interpreted the foyer as being the &quot;museum of piracy&quot; that was the original germ of an idea for the attraction. You pass through an elegant townhouse façade as you would at Madame Tussaud&#39;a, and enter a large room full of portraits and props.Melissahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06169920944565828337noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-48298014532247518192011-08-22T00:20:46.541-04:002011-08-22T00:20:46.541-04:00@weepstah -
I am myself a film enthusiast and cin...@weepstah -<br /><br />I am myself a film enthusiast and cinema does inform a lot of what I write about here. There isn&#39;t really a quick and easy correlation between theme attractions and cutting, sadly, although I have brought up theories by Brakhage and others to talk about this:m http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2009/02/structuring-experience.html<br /><br />and <br /><br />http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2007/03/dialectical-montage-and-disneyland.html<br /><br />and<br /><br />http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/2007/04/towards-workable-concept.html<br /><br />(you&#39;ll see plenty of overlap in those)<br /><br />I think the point is not that Pirates has a story so much as it has a conceptually unified creative expression, and one which is, we must point out, unintentional. That&#39;s okay; I&#39;m analyzing effects, not intent here. We experience &quot;the idea of Piracy&quot; in the guise of a mystery, but it&#39;s hard to call it a &quot;narrative&quot; and it&#39;s absolutely not a &quot;story&quot;, which is the events of a character inside a narrative. It&#39;s much more abstract than that. It&#39;s a little puzzle for us to solve but we are at best impassive observers, possibly not even present in reality. There are no &quot;wonderful people out there in the dark&quot;.FoxxFurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00443092111956989561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-71230321662962276392011-08-21T23:13:40.896-04:002011-08-21T23:13:40.896-04:00Well, I&#39;m with you with themed attraction-as-a...Well, I&#39;m with you with themed attraction-as-art. In film we sit still and images move and shift in front of us, with an attraction like PotC the images stay &#39;still&#39; (mostly) and we the viewer shift around them. So if film can be art then attractions should also be given the same consideration.<br /><br />Do the arches serve the same purpose as a well executed cut? And like film, what we hear is used to bridge the gap and help unite the scenes. I keep bringing up film because the influence the film techniques learned by the studio were used over and over and over again when developing the park and attractions. Which I know everyone already knows, but your post has me thinking about that connection in much more literal terms.<br /><br />I&#39;m finding your post raises all sorts of questions. The biggest one is - what about The Myth of Story? You may be way ahead of me here, I&#39;m still feeling my way. It feels to me that you are saying that what makes the original PotC the greatest is that...it has a story. Are we saying that PotC borrowed more heavily from film story and structure techniques, and this is what puts it at the top of the ziggurat?<br /><br />Now I feel like I&#39;m going in circles. Part of my disquiet is the ranking and ordering of things. If you asked me to choose between Pinocchio or Singin&#39; in the Rain or Kwaidan or Miller&#39;s Crossing, I would say: I choose not to choose.<br /><br />I really like how you lay out the structure of the ride, how the participants are brought deeper and deeper into the ghost story until there is no place to go but down the chute and into the past and ultimately back up the chute and into the (relative) present.<br /><br />I apologize for the chaotic comments, you&#39;ve given me much to think about.weepstahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13599728117501146736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-40852864473763684022011-08-21T17:55:01.956-04:002011-08-21T17:55:01.956-04:00Excellent post! I need to get out to California to...Excellent post! I need to get out to California to see Pirates again. The only other time I was there was in 1985 as a kid.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12351431577484530230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-78103321425314551842011-08-21T16:28:44.111-04:002011-08-21T16:28:44.111-04:00Two words: God damn.
It&#39;s official now. You ...Two words: God damn. <br /><br />It&#39;s official now. You have cornered the market when it comes to themed design analysis.Man-Eating Sharkshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12947126724903895248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-5304453848591875322011-08-21T14:07:08.414-04:002011-08-21T14:07:08.414-04:00One of your best posts yet. I especially enjoyed t...One of your best posts yet. I especially enjoyed the allusion to the fantastic &quot;Blue Bayou&quot; piece cut from the original Fantasia; it&#39;s my favorite vignette that never made the cut.<br /><br />And also,thank you for explaining the purpose of Horseshoe Parrot Island. I had always been confused as to its part of the story, but it all seems to fit together now.SeaCastlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14982820311318373556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-25656467481984893452011-08-21T12:09:39.549-04:002011-08-21T12:09:39.549-04:00I have to say, honestly, this is the BEST analysis...I have to say, honestly, this is the BEST analysis of California&#39;s Pirates I&#39;ve ever read. WONDERFUL work, Foxx.Chris F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02416033870426307881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32105106.post-7537909230383484772011-08-21T11:40:35.369-04:002011-08-21T11:40:35.369-04:00Great writeup and analysis! Fascinating to see th...Great writeup and analysis! Fascinating to see the level of creative thought that went into something like this...John Huntingtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03437749952858582679noreply@blogger.com